Son of Beaumont man wins citizenship fight

Published 12:00 am, Wednesday, March 3, 2010

Juan Alameda received his certificate of American citizenship in February, but because he needed it quickly to avoid deportation to Mexico, his photo on the document shows him in his orange jail jumpsuit.

It was a long way from his birth in Mexico in 1962 to imprisonment in Minnesota, but a team of lawyers at the William Mitchell College of Law in Minneapolis took his case because Alameda's father, Sam, is an American citizen, born July 8, 1930, in Rosedale, north of Beaumont.

Juan had legally entered the United States in 1991, sponsored by his father and was given the proper document, commonly called a green card. But there was a problem in proving his citizenship, which his lawyers said should have been granted anyway because at least one parent is an American citizen.

The obstacle lay in proving that Sam Alameda, his father, had lived continuously in the United States before Juan was born. The last piece of information to help prove Sam lived in Beaumont fell into place on the last day evidence could be submitted in front of a citizenship panel, said Juan's Minneapolis-St. Paul-based attorney, Roger Junilla.

It came in the form of a letter written by Ella Flores, 75, of Beaumont, who remembers Sam working as a bus boy around 1958 at the Little Mexico Restaurant, on College Street west of Fourth Street. She was prompted to write because of an article about Juan Alameda's case in The Enterprise last year.